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Super-what? Bowl ads underwhelm, but TV lives strong, pundits say Photo: Mingo.nl, Flickr Creative Commons It was a game that was already a winner in the hearts and minds of many, but as always, most of the real excitement around the Super Bowl was in the ads. Viewership numbers aren't yet available this morning, but MiC invited three experts from Canadian media agencies to weigh in on what they thought of the media strategies executed during the game. Sure, the Canadian roll-out never has the same oomph as the States, but as you'll find below, there's still no shortage of opinion. Another unexciting year of Canadian Super Bowl ads If previous Canadian Super Bowl media strategies could be categorized as underwhelming, then I would say this year followed nicely in that tradition. Now, I don't have the expectation of big budget, grandiose spots here in Canada, it's just not the market for it (so it would seem). But there's barely an effort for something fresh in this year's crop of Super Bowl ads. Of course, I'm just part of the choir when saying that. I kept track of every commercial that ran during the Super Bowl proper in a large spreadsheet. Sure, it was a distraction from my party but I needed some basis for analysis. It quickly became clear what my analysis would reveal because it was employed by so many advertisers: that the theme of this year's Canadian Super Bowl was repetition. The Super Bowl is one of the biggest audiences in Canada and arguably the show where the audience is most engaged with the advertisements. I think that still holds true in Canada despite the yearly platter of disappointment served to them. So there is license for advertisers to put something special out there and capitalize on the opportunity. It doesn't need to be expensive, just interesting, entertaining, humorous or whatever. The ads were safe, typical, standard TV-spot fare. Exacerbating that was a strategy of buying multiple slots not just in the game but often in the same quarter. In more than a handful of cases, the sheer volume of spots aired repeatedly was overkill, especially with the banality of them. While multiple spots in a game can be fine, and often a worthy media strategy, it wasn't used as well as it could have been. The opportunity to tell a story - something all brand advertisers needs to get better at - was almost completely missing. My spreadsheet revealed that there were many brands or companies that had at least two minutes of combined airtime, but all they did was show the same one or two spots, collect the GRPs and move on. That's two minutes of airtime that could have weaved a deeper story, explored an insight, involved consumers, emboldened the audience, shown the company to be caring and not faceless, spoke to how they are making Canada a better place or otherwise been anything but what they were. The oomph and impact of something meaningful was mostly absent. The Super Bowl is an example of pure TV entertainment at its best: Television is not dead.
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